Technical Experimentation in Ship Design during the Last Decades of the Serenissima: Gerolamo Maria Balbi’s Galea alla Ponentina

In 1744, the Venetian sea captain Gerolamo Maria Balbi (1693–1761) presented the Senate with a project to build a galea alla ponentina (“galley of Western design”) that would join the Venetian fleet based in Corfu. The Senate approved Balbi’s project hoping that the galley of new design would restore Venice’s maritime reputation after the losses of the war against the Ottomans in 1718. The construction of the galley by the Venetian shipwright Giovan Battista Fausto lasted more than two years and was sent to Corfu in 1746. However, the newly built galley proved to be unseaworthy due to its faulty design and was sent back to Venice where it lay abandoned in the Arsenal until its dismissal in 1753. This article discusses Balbi’s galley, which offers a unique glimpse into the technical experimentation in ship design in the Arsenal during the last decades of the Republic of Venice.